I still love his work in all its forms, it’s not uniformly great but when it succeeds, I think it’s pure genius. Lear’s most intimate friendship seems to have been with his beloved cat Fop - who features here in a series of beguiling sketches. Revisiting these as an adult it’s hard not to wonder how much the overwhelming loneliness, the sense of futility that pervades characters like the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo reflects Lear’s own experiences and inner world: almost certainly queer but without a means of embracing that grappling with long-term illness, and endless money worries. But now I’m not so sure Lear’s work’s well suited to child readers, despite his marvellously eccentric alphabets and furiously comical images, there’s a vein of deep, almost unbearable, sadness that surfaces from time to time, as in my favourite song, the haunting tale of longing and thwarted desire “The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.” It’s a song so weighed down with intense emotions that I found it difficult to deal with when I first encountered it. Lear’s unique blend of quirk, whimsy and strange melancholy, has been part of my literary landscape since I was really young, and ever since lines and images from his nonsense songs have a tendency to suddenly pop up in my head: the Jumblies with their blue hands and green heads, the vast hat of the Quangle Wangle. Lear’s wonderful brand of absurdism, his arresting artwork, his skill and playfulness with words, have made him an iconic figure for a host of writers from Eley Williams and John Ashbery to Donald Barthelme, Edward Gorey, and W. A collection of the nonsense writings of prolific Victorian artist and author Edward Lear.
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